Every year on Christmas Eve my parents would take my brother and I over to our grandparent’s house to celebrate. My aunts, uncles and cousins would all be there. Every year including the years I worked Christmas Eve I went to their house. It was always a tradition. But this year was a little different.

Judd and I knew this would be our first married Christmas together. With him working at the hospital, it’s difficult to spend holidays with family who live two hours away and just leave him here by himself. This year we decided to have a low-key Christmas celebration. How did we spend our Christmas Eve together? Well for starters, we ordered Chinese take-out from our favorite place. Sweet and Sour chicken with white rice makes for a perfect Christmas Eve dinner. We opened our gifts to each other and watched Gus attempt to unwrap his. He opted for eating the wrapping paper instead but loved his toys once Judd helped him! We cuddled up on the couch and watched Christmas Vacation which I can practically quote! It was a nice way to spend the evening, just the two of us.

Not a lot of people understand that certain occupations have to work on holidays. Judd works at a hospital which is always open. My brother also works during the Holidays at the busiest place on earth: Walt Disney World. My mother is a nurse and missed many holidays with family because of work. But we always made-up for it on another day during the holiday week. Just like my parents when they first got married, we worked around our work schedules for our Christmas festivities. We saw Christmas Eve as our opportunity to celebrate together before Judd had to work Christmas day. My family even Skyped us when they opened their gifts so we could be a part of everything even from afar.

We were able to drive down the day after Christmas to enjoy the company of both of our families. We managed to get both of them together Saturday night for Hibachi! It was a wonderful holiday! I even managed to get Judd and Gus to take a Christmas picture in front of my parents tree. His idea of dressing up is a Yankees shirt! Happy Holiday’s to all!

We all have funny Christmas stories and memories we will never forget. A few years back, my father managed to “out-Griswold” Chevy Chase in the Christmas Vacation movie. If you have seen that movie or even heard of it you know that Chevy Chase has the WORST luck during the holiday season. (Locking himself in the attic, falling through the roof, etc…) I didn’t think it could ever be done but my father pulled it off. This is the story of the Christmas my father almost caught the house on fire.

It was a cold December evening-one where the meteorologists on the news urged citizens to cover their plants with sheets due to a freeze warning. My father thought it would be a great idea to not only cover the bushes in the front of our house with a sheet but also put a decorative colored lamp under the sheet for extra warmth. He managed to get more heat than he bargained for! I woke up the next morning to find my mother distraught with my father about the ordeal. I walked outside to see the bushes were nothing but burned branches, the leaves non-existent and part of the house had been damaged with smoke. The remnants of the sheet lay on the grass in a charred disarray. I couldn’t believe it. All of this happened while we were asleep. My father, who is a very smart man, almost burned the house down just a few short days before Christmas!

We laugh about it now but he will never live down the year he (almost) caught the house on fire. It’s safe to say that he also learned his lesson! What’s your favorite Christmas Story or Memory?

Every holiday season my mom would bake dozens of her Christmas Cookies. I always wanted to know her secret to the best cookies ever made and hoped to one day inherit the recipe. For Christmas last year she gifted my brother and I a binder filled with the recipes from our childhood including these cookies which she proudly titled “The Best Cookies Ever.” This year I decided to give these cookies a try in hopes that they would turn out just like mom’s. Since this recipe is cherished in our family, I will not be giving it out!

I gathered my ingredients from the store and spaced them out along my rather small kitchen counter. I got the recipe out from the cookbook binder my mother made my brother and I last Christmas. I had Spotify tuned to Holiday Classics and I put my Minnie apron on. I was ready to go! I would text my mom through each step to make sure I was making these exactly how she would! I took notes on the recipe sheet for next year so I wouldn’t forget her tips.

Three hours later…my kitchen floor was covered in flour and sugar but the cookies came out exactly how I wanted them too…just like mom’s! I felt great! It was a goal of mine to successfully bake my mother’s specialty cookies. Happy Holidays!

Weddings were always about tradition. When my mother and grandmother’s were planning their weddings, tradition was the norm. Getting married anywhere else other than a church was frowned upon. Brides wore white gowns and carried white roses. They had wedding cakes to cut and bouquets to toss. Each tradition had been set by generations before and they didn’t change much.

But modern brides are branching out with the help of their vendors to create unique wedding traditions of their own. I found a lot of this in my wedding planning research. My husband and I knew right away that we wanted to do things a little differently. We were shaking up the traditional and going for the unique!

It helps that many vendors are willing to help collaborate with the bride’s style and desires to pull off unique touches different from our mother’s and grandmother’s. My own grandmother was a bit creative with her flowers and wanted red roses in her bouquet which was unheard of back then. She loved the idea of being different and setting her wedding a part from others.

It’s amazing what you can do to really personalize and set your wedding a part when you break traditions! Here are a few traditions you may consider breaking.

Traditions to Break:

Flowers. There is so much you can do with flowers if you find the right florist but let’s say you don’t want flowers at all. There are many alternatives for carrying flowers. Brides can carry old books or handmade handkerchiefs. I opted for flowerless centerpieces by placing old books on the tables with framed pictures of my husband and I throughout our relationship.

Getting married in a church. I was raised Catholic. My mother and mother-in-law both got married in the Catholic church. We decided not to have a church wedding and have our ceremony outside under the large oak trees of North Florida. I have nothing against church weddings but we knew we wanted a ceremony outside among nature.

Having a cake. Cakes are expensive and not many people will eat it. We opted for a mini desserts table. Little cupcakes, cookies and macaroons for each guest to try. It was a hit and saved us some money!

‘Tis the season for holiday-theme date nights! Judd suggested a few weeks ago that we go to the Community Nutcracker Ballet at The Florida Theater in downtown Jacksonville. I thought it was a lovely idea! Saturday night we went out for Thai food from Indochine and watched local dancers perform one of my favorite ballets.

I have always loved the Nutcracker ballet. Everything from the music to the costumes and even the storyline. I would borrow my parent’s Tchaikovsky Nutcracker CD and dance around my bedroom like I was in the real ballet performing in front of thousands. My dreams of dancing in the ballet came true when I was about 8 years old. I was cast in my dance studio’s production of The Nutcracker as one of Mother Ginger’s children. (We ran out of her dress and did a dance for Clara and the Nutcracker.) I was beside myself! Our costumes were hand-made by our choreographer. We had a couple of performances and each time I would have to get sown into my pink dress I wore for the show. As one of the kids, I rode in on a platform device that Mother Ginger sat on top of. Crew would wheel us out at the beginning of our song and as soon as we reached center stage we ran through the dress opening and danced around. I was living a dream!

On Christmas Eve that year, my grandmother surprised me with a red Nutcracker doll and the soundtrack to the ballet. Every single picture we took that year I held onto my Nutcracker doll. I still have both the Music and the Nutcracker doll she gave me today. It meant so much to me to have my husband take me to see the ballet. I know men probably hate dance let alone a ballet but he seemed to enjoy himself. He even suggested making it a yearly tradition but we will see how he feels about that statement next year!